Where to begin...

I am 36 years old. I found a lump (completely by accident) a couple of months ago, when I was still 35. I know... SO YOUNG!  LOL... my silver lining is that people have started telling me I was young again.  I started this blog because over the past two weeks so much has happened and it has become harder and harder to keep people updated. I also started this because, surprisingly to me, writing things down in e-mail was therapeutic. It made sense that a blog must be just like paying for therapy, only I wouldn't actually have to pay. Score! 

I am going to tell my story step by step, day by day.  For right now, I can say for certain that I have invasive ductal carcinoma on the right side as well as cancer cells in the lymph nodes on the same side. There is also one spot of pre-ductal carcinoma on the right side.  That just means that the cancer cells are not yet able to spread as they have not yet figured out how to bust out of the milk duct.  They need to die and be removed before they turn into ductal carcinoma.  

Though I am not 100% sure yet what this means, other than it is best case scenario for my situation, the proteins on the cancer cells are HER2 negative, estrogen positive and progesterone positive. What I do know about this positive/negative business is that I will be able to do endocrine therapy after surgery.  It also means that my type of cancer is not particularly aggressive.    I had a pet scan today and will have an MRI tomorrow.  The pet scan had great news. Because my cancer is not particularly aggressive, it has not left my lymph nodes.  Those little buggers are doing their job and keeping that cancer in!!  Because of the large size of my tumor and because the cancer has made it to lymph nodes, I am officially at stage 3.  With chemotherapy now and surgery later, that stage is expected to lower dramatically, or better yet, go away completely.  

There has been so much information.  I hope I have all of the details straight.  I think I am at least super close.  I have learned one very important thing so far.  While other women (and men) fight breast cancer all the time, each and every experience is so drastically different.  This is my story.  I have reached out to other women in my world who are finding their own light in their fight.  Their experiences, while unique to them, still mean so much to me.  I am able to draw from their strength and maybe... some day... I will be able to shed some light on the subject for another women searching for her own.